Hi everyone. Currently, I'm also a member of the Mojikyo Institute. As far as I know, there are really LOTS of Chinese Characters that can be found in the mojikyo database but can't be seen yet on this site, nor on Unicode. Recently, I've also read some articles that "if all languages are contented with unicode, then chinese characters will be in trouble. I don't agree well on this saying, since it poses a threat to the invention and existence of new Chinese characters. This website:http://140.111.1.40/ contains a huge mass of unencoded chinese chars. and if we count them together with the number of coded ones, numbers can reach 100000+ . I know a lot of dialectical or rare variants chinese characters. Some months ago, I bought a Chinese coin from the era of Xuan Tong(Emperor Pu-Yi). the character "xuan" has a different shape" ,unlike the other much "commoner" ones. However, I doubt it if that character is already in Unicode nor on this website. Let me cite another instance: When I was just young, I saw a Chinese character (min, same as the character for Min,Fukien Province) with 2 mountains on its top. As we all know it, Fujian is very mountainous (I guess that's why the character has 2 mountains on top of it).Sorry to say but I forgot the program who had shown it on t.v. Sadly, I couldn't find this character elsewhere. Nor do I have some sufficient documents /articles to be used as evidence. These 2 are examples that there are still many "undocumented" characters occuring today. Has anyone of you seen these characters?

Richard wrote:> > Hi everyone. Currently, I'm also a member of the Mojikyo> Institute. As far as I know, there are really LOTS of Chinese> Characters that can be found in the mojikyo database but> can't be seen yet on this site, nor on Unicode. Recently,> I've also read some articles that "if all languages are> contented with unicode, then chinese characters will be in> trouble. I don't agree well on this saying, since it poses a> threat to the invention and existence of new Chinese> characters. This website:http://140.111.1.40/ contains a> huge mass of unencoded chinese chars. and if we count them> together with the number of coded ones, numbers can reach> 100000+ .

One thing we have to be careful about is what we consider two differentcharacters, and what we consider to be two allographs of the samecharacter. Generally, Mojikyou is more liberal than Unicode in what itconsiders to be two different characters, whereas Unicode might justconsider them to be within the tolerances of font variation. It's importantfor data processing that we do not have too many very similar characters tochoose from. For example, there are two ways to write "a" and "g" inLatin script. If we had to worry about which one people might have typedin, then functions like searches would fail unless the two were equatedsomehow. However, deciding when two characters are the same ordifferent is not always clear-cut, and individual opinions do differ.

> I know a lot of dialectical or rare variants> chinese characters.

Just out of curiousity, how do you manage to learn of such rare characterswithout books like the _Kangxi Zidian_?

> Some months ago, I bought a Chinese coin> from the era of Xuan Tong(Emperor Pu-Yi). the character> "xuan" has a different shape" ,unlike the other much> "commoner" ones. However, I doubt it if that character is> already in Unicode nor on this website.

Could you scan or draw a picture of that? Or find a picture online?I'd be interested in seeing what it looks like. Or a reference to a coincatalog like Krause's?

> Let me cite another> instance: When I was just young, I saw a Chinese character> (min, same as the character for Min,Fukien Province) with 2> mountains on its top. As we all know it, Fujian is very> mountainous (I guess that's why the character has 2 mountains> on top of it).Sorry to say but I forgot the program who had> shown it on t.v. Sadly, I couldn't find this character> elsewhere. Nor do I have some sufficient documents /articles> to be used as evidence. These 2 are examples that there are> still many "undocumented" characters occuring today. Has> anyone of you seen these characters?

I have not seen either of those two, although the latter seems likepure decoration--'mountains' don't quite add any extra phonetic orsemantic information.

Have you seen that "kanji no shashin jiten" site? (I posted the url toits "shinji" page today in this thread in response to James' post onzhaocaijinbao.) It's got a lot of unusual characters, though some seemto be borderline cases that rely on a zhuanshu or lishu form in order tomake a point for an independent character.

Hi! I find info about these characters on T.V. When I become addicted to one thing, I try searching for more and more info about the subject. I still remember thet I saw the variant for "min" probably about 2 years ago in a certain tv station devoted to chinese culture and language. Anyway, I would like to propose thewse 2 characters that I've mentioned to be added to the consortium. How can that be? can you help me? What are the steps/ processes involved in approving these rare characters that I've discovered? BTW, I also saw a rare variant of a certain character. I saw it on this site:http://140.111.1.40 . It is a variant of the character for Pin, a kingdom/state during the warring states period. It has a big mountain bushou. As you can see, the mountain bushou has 2 spaces,both on its left and right part. 2 fen(cent) characters are both placed on these 2 spaces that I've mentioned before. This character is a variant of the character for Pin Chou kingdom which existed earlier in Chinese history. I have another suggestion: why don't we establish a committee here in this site or on the Internet which would give some importance to Newly dicovered rare characters? That would help a lot and will be beneficial for all of us.I discover rare Chinese Characters by going to Chinatown and interviewing some very old Chinese people. Some of them are already aged in their 80's. The oldest person that I got some info was 86 years old.I really treasure Chinese Characters and I really value them. I think I wouldn't survive for a day without them. It took me a lot of time before I could print this site's character Dictionary. I spent a lot of money and time printing them for my own personal use. I guess it took me about 8000 to 10000 pages, so as to print them!! Some years ago, I tried to find a complete chinese dictionary, but in vain. Nor did I find a Kangxi or a hanyu da zidian.Out of desperation, I printed this sites CCDICT. Now, I can read ancient Chinese texts and decipher them.I searched for a lot of places. I even tried to go and search everybookstore here in Chinatown. In that whole area, I only found 2 bookstores, only carrying small copies of the guo yu cidian.People there informed me that this is the only dictionary available, aside from the cihui.Running out of luck, I found this site and printed this site's char. dict. ,which was my last remedy.

Did you know that an airplane hop over to HK and neighboring towns would probably have been more worth it than printing out this site's dictionary on 10,000 pages? What are you going to do with all that paper, and how do you find anything? That's what the cross-linked web is for, and it has search capabilities 1000萬 times faster than you can use your hands! Besides, a trip to HK might have been cheaper, more rewarding, full of memories and pictures, real language use and practice, just so much more rewarding in so many ways. So you spend some time, ask around and buy a few dictionaries while you're there, maybe visit a library or two, it just doesn't compare to the costs of printing this online dictionary onto 10,000 pages. Is there really a print function anyway? Anyway, I can't think it to be very organized.

There are some other scripts such as Xixia that have very little literary value and more artistic value, but that amount of literary value is still something to consider. I'm currently studying these. I have access to a lot of specialized dictionaries. Just ask and I can probably find one, if not already have it.

In chữ Nôm, the characters borrowed from Chinese are used to:represent Chinese loan words and to represent native Vietnamese words. The formal writing was not done in Vietnamese, but in classical Chinese. Nôm was replaced by quốc ngữ (alphabetical Vietnamese) beginning in the 1920s and is now almost entirely obsolete.